Social Influence

1. Social Influence Principles & techniques where one person’s attitudes, cognitions, behaviours, changed through doings of another Focus on behaviour change

2. Background • Study of people’s influence on each other is one of the big 3 of social psych (others are attitudes & attributions). • ‘Messy’ research as it’s very much real-world based. • A humanist need to understand war and conflict generally.

3. Three classic studies: obedience, conformity, & compliance. • original context of the studies (why then?; could we do them now?). • apply to both enduring and topical scenarios.

4. Definitions • Obedience: explicit order. • Conformity: Implicit process; go along with what’s out there. • see also compliance: yielding to others. • Some room for cross-over.

5. Factors causing compliance Social Influences on compliance ·     Focusing on powerful effects (ability to change compliance decisions) experiment not most useful determiner ·     Development of powerful compliance inducers

6. 6 psychological principles • Reciprocation • Friendship/liking • Scarcity • Consistency • Social Validation • Authority

7. Reciprocation • return a gift, favour, service -  widely shared feeling of human obligation Rule for compliance: • more willing to comply with request from someone who has previously provided favour/concession. • Unsolicited gift + request for donation technique - socialised sense of discomfort of unpaid debt • Reciprocal concessions: • Door-in-the-face-technique (extreme followed by moderate request) Cialdini et al. 1975 • That’s-not-all-technique Burger 1976

8. Friendship/Liking Rule: more willing to comply with friends, liked individuals Tupperware parties Tactics to increase liking: • Physical attractiveness • Similarity • Compliments • Cooperation

9. Scarcity Rule: one should try to secure those opportunities that are scarce/dwindling 2 sources of power of scarcity: • availability of item determines quality • lose freedoms, psychological reactance theory (Brehm 1966)

10. limited access – increased desire –assign positive qualities to justify desire • limited access to information also makes it more desirable and more influential, Brock 1968 • Idea of potential loss v important in human decision making, Tversky & Kahneman 1981 

11. Consistency Desire (to appear) consistent - prime motivator of behaviour Festinger 1957, Heider 1958, Newcomb 1953, Baumeister 1982  How is force engaged? commitment Rule: having committed to a position, more willing to comply with requests consistent with that position

12. Strategy to generate crucial instigating commitment: • Foot-in-the-door technique (Freedman & Fraser 1966) (children not influenced until understand idea of stable personality trait) • commitment maximally effective to extent it is active; effortful; public; internally motivated

13. Social validation Use beliefs, attitudes, actions of similar others as standard of comparison for self-evaluation Rule: more willing to comply with request for behaviour if consistent with what similar others are doing .

14. Asch (1955, 1956) - Conformity • The cornerstone of group studies. • 7-9 students, taking part in an exercise of visual judgment. • 6-8 confederates. • 2 cards: reference line and a card with 3 ‘candidate’ lines. One was obviously correct. • 1st 2 trials: correct for both confederate and participant. • Subsequent: unanimous choice of wrong line by confederates.

15. Results • Floor level of wrong answers (1%) on 1st 2 trials. • 37% on subsequent. • Interesting points: • One ‘dissenter’ lessened conformity drastically. • Low self-esteem strongly inclined (cf. Crowne & Marlow, 1964). • Gender – very much nuanced. • Eagly & Carli (1981) – small diff. in a meta-analysis. • Cialdini & Trost (1998): men less likely to conform in public settings.

16. Festinger’s Social Comparison theory 1954 –   constant drive to evaluate ourselves –   if available, prefer to use objective cues –   if not, rely on social comparison evidence –   prefer similar others for comparison purposes List technique Reingen 1982

17. Authority Legitmate authorities v influential, Aronson et al. 1963 Rule: more willing to follow suggestions of authority • Hofling et al. 1966 – Dr. on phone, nurses willing to administer unsafe level of drug Uniforms, etc. • Lefkowitz et al. 1955 Jaywalker in business suit

18. Milgram (1963, 1974) - Obedience • One of the most cited studies of all time in all social sciences. • Inspired by the hypothesis that the Germans were ‘different’. • Yale setting (important). • Confederate (learner) – participant design. 40 subjects. • 1-30 shock level. • No one stopped before level 20 (top end of ‘intense shock’). • 26 went to the top of the xxx shock. • Mean max shock was 27.

19. Explaining the effect • Obedience to authority: Apparatus of authority is crucial • Coat; Yale; scientific progress; gravitas… Variation - NO subject gave shock when non-authority demanded it • Gradual increase in demands; consistency needs • Limited source of information in a novel situation • Responsibility not assigned or diffused • Norm information? Personality variables?

20. Impact • Huge applicability (average white men). • Ecological validity debate • Did they know it was a set up? • Unlikely: physiological and direct observations; new for its time). • Ethics: should you be able to do this to people? • None regretted it in the debriefing.

21. Interesting findings (Blass, 2000). • Women as ‘prone’ as men. • Proxemics is a factor. • Self-reports in advance don’t tally. • Personality factors: RWA (Altemeyer, 1996).

22. Zimbardo (1972, 1975): roles & compliance. • Prison guard study. • 22 college students. • Volunteered for this study. • ‘Hygiene’ (1983) important: arrested, fingerprinted, stripped, ‘deloused’ (deodorised!), uniformed.

23. Key details • Uniform was smock like (emasculating). • Mirror sunglasses. • No names used (not told to do this). • Half the prisoners dropped out due to stress. • Ganged up on each other. • Milder officers moved towards the position of the more ‘hard core’ ones. • Parole board – denied; returned to cells. • Due to last 2 weeks; abandoned after 6 days. • No ‘good’ guard intervened

24. Obedience when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social & institutional support • Cognitive dissonance theory • Power of authority • Power of a strong situation

25. Reading (All in June’s office) • Reading 37 & 40 in Forty Studies that Changed Psychology. • Zimbardo interview • American Psychologist January 2009, 64(1) 1-11, 12-19, 20-27, 28-31, 32-36.